I know whereof Will Braun spoke, when he told our class about his trepidation about moving back to the Bible Belt near Winkler Manitoba. I had exactly the same experience, moving back to the south eastern Bible belt of Steinbach after 7 years of university. I dragged my lovely exotic French wife, Christiane with me. And she was fearful of what this move would mean. It was a big change from life in the big smoke. But she was brave and came with me.  She might not have realized how anxious I was about this move too. I had never intended to come back to Steinbach, but all of a sudden it just happened, when the local lawyer hired me right out of law school. I was not at all sure whether or not I would fit in either. Most of my friends were gone. Not many of us came back from University, at least so it seemed to me at the time. And just like Will Braun, the people here seemed strange, because they were so different from the people I have been living with in the past 7 years. But I was thrown into the deep end, as was Christiane, even more than I.

I think Braun had it easier than I did. He had kept his faith more or less intact, and both of our communities were places where faith, or lack of faith was vitally important. I kept my doubts more or less to myself and my close friends who understood this. My alienation was quiet but deep.  Here Braun and I were in similar conditions.

It took a while, but gradually I started to realize that I did not have all the answers about these people in the country—these people that were largely from the Bible belt.  I particularly felt this in Niverville a small town that at first seemed very conservative to me.  My boss had asked me to work there every Wednesday night.  Many of those people were from Paraguay or Mexico or other places in South America. They mainly spoke low German, a language I had to learn on the job. They wanted to speak low German and I tried to speak it. I was grateful when they did not laugh at my broken low German with German and English words mixed in. They liked it that I tried. That’s all they needed.

I got to know these people and I got to like them. We had different viewpoints but that did not matter. I realized they were good people. People I could trust. Of course, with some rare exceptions. We were not that different after all. They had much more conservative views than I did.  But I was no better than them. I still kept my views, as did they, but we could get along.

John O’Donoghue was right: “Part of the awakening of any life, is the arrival of contradiction within that life…It is sometimes in the most unusual places that you discover the gift of the beautiful.” These contradictions arrived in my life, and I had to accept them.

I remember many years later, after I had been working in Niverville for decades. I had worked there one day a week only because I had a busy practice in Steinbach.  I reluctantly came to realize I would have to turn that practice to another young lawyer who had more time and could devote his whole time and attention to the practice there. He has never looked back.

I remember too when that happened how sad my secretary was. She said she loved working with those people from Niverville. She was a town girl from Steinbach but she would miss them. I was surprised. But I realized I felt exactly the same way. The contradictions had melted away.